Was ‘Halloween: Resurrection’ Really That Bad (Review)?

Written by: Daniel Hadley

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Cast: Katee Sackhoff, Jamie lee Curtis, Busta Rhymes

While Halloween: H20 has its detractors, I feel it was an honest attempt to cap off the franchise and give Laurie Strode the closure her character had been longing for ever since her big brother Michael murdered all of her friends and family. Watching Laurie go toe to toe  with the unstoppable killing machine that is Michael Myers was kind of glorious. She gave him everything she had and H20 ended on a powerful and very definitive note with Laurie taking an axe and slicing Michael’s head from his shoulders. Franchise over right? Well H20 made enough money to warrant a very unwarranted sequel which leads me to Halloween: Resurrection.

While H20 had ended with Laurie finally getting the revenge she deserved, Resurrection ends with Busta Rhymes screaming “trick or treat motherfucker!” before jamming an electrical cable into Michael’s dick. Quite the contrast, I know, and I hope that illustrates just how far the franchise dropped off in just one movie. While there were certainly lesser entries in the Halloween franchise before Resurrection even the worst of them were still fun (and Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is awesome by the way, get over the fact Michael isn’t in it and enjoy for what it is), Resurrection is just a shameless cash grab. And to make matters worse it’s the final note of the original franchise before it was rebooted. It could and should have ended with H20 but apparently that wasn’t good enough, so instead have this pile of hot garbage.

So onto the plot, Busta Rymes and Tyra Banks (fucking hell) set up a reality internet show to take place on Halloween in the Myers home. If the contestants can make it through the night they get some prize money or something. It’s not important. Unbeknownst to them, Michael is living like a hermit underneath the house, eating rats and doing whatever the hell an unstoppable masked killer does in his free time. Solitaire maybe, who cares? Oh yeah, and he kills Laurie at the start of the movie, so that powerful moment of closure from the last movie, well fuck that, it’s brushed aside to make way for this piece of shit.

Other than Katee Sackhoff in an early role, there are no actors worth noting here and the performances are equally forgettable to downright bad. There’s nothing good here folks. The direction and editing feel downright amateur at times. I mean this is a Halloween sequel, it’s one of the premiere horror franchises, this isn’t Urban Legends 2: The Final Cut, it’s a god damned Halloween Sequel and Michael is one of the big three (the other two being Freddy and Jason). The franchise deserved better than this.

So why is it so bad? Well, other than the complete lack of respect for a horror icon (seriously an electrical cable to the dick, what the fuck is that?!) Resurrection has zero atmosphere, totally lacks any suspense and with the characters being so forgettable it didn’t even illicit so much as a blip on the emotional radar when characters are killed off. After suffering through a chunk of this movie, right when a camera tripod that for some reason has a giant spike on the bottom of it was jammed into a guy’s throat, all of the synapses in my brain began to fire off at once and I just screamed “what is love” for ten minutes straight. Okay, so obviously that didn’t happen, but it very well could have. Well, probably not, but whatever point I was trying to make still stands.

So the kills are the usual fair: heads crushed, decapitations, stabbings. I mentioned the tripod though the neck. There was a head in a washing machine at one point. It’s nothing special and the effects are pretty subpar. The severed head in particular looks suitably laughable as the obviousness of its painted on expression is shown up close and for way too long, I’m finding it difficult to recall much of the movie, as it’s all just kind of a haze to be honest, but I’ll try to focus and tone down the snark in an effort to get to some sort of point.

The reality show horror movie angle was overdone from the first time it was attempted (with the only exception being Wrong Turn 2: Dead End) the two just don’t blend well together, well in my opinion at least. It worked in Wrong Turn 2 because the crew were out in the wilderness and there were a multitude of cannibals picking them off. In Halloween: Resurrection it’s all being live-streamed over the internet, and of course the police do the whole “it’s Halloween so we’re not going to take any phone calls seriously” bit. If someone is reporting a crime the police have to respond, that’s why it’s a crime to make a false report. It’s one of the most illogical clichés that will seemingly never die; so we have supposedly thousands of onlookers just watching people get murdered. Now I could believe that the viewers simply think it’s just part of the show if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious that these people are actually being murdered. A low budget 2002 reality internet show isn’t going to have the budget to fake a live murder with no edits. I’m sorry that ain’t happening.

As the movie started I recall The Sound of Silence began to play in my head and the words “hello darkness my old friend” rang out in my skull. I was tempted to shut it off and just write this review from memory but this is October and I decided to do my part. I’m never watching it again, ever, and I hope that in reading this neither will you. But if – out of morbid curiosity – you decide to check this one out, then God speed unsung hero, my thoughts will be with you.

Rating: 0/5